


Undercover at the Booty Chest

by jujuberry136



Category: Criminal Minds, The Middleman (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-14
Updated: 2010-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/176903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujuberry136/pseuds/jujuberry136
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reid goes undercover at the Booty Chest, the pirate themed sports bar with scantily clad waitresses. Crossover with The Middleman. Written for <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/cm_crackfic/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/cm_crackfic/"><b>cm_crackfic</b></a>’s pirate challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Undercover at the Booty Chest

**Author's Note:**

> Crackfic means never having to say your sorry. Couldn’t let [](http://amichevole.livejournal.com/profile)[**amichevole**](http://amichevole.livejournal.com/)  have all the fun. Knowledge of The Middleman isn’t necessary to understand the story (but it makes it funnier.) Neither show belongs to me, the honors go to Javier Grillo-Marxuach and Ed Bernero. 

Logically, Reid knows he’s the right choice for this particular job. While normally Prentiss or Morgan would be the first choice for an undercover operation, neither are at the point where they can realistically pretend to be struggling with massive student loans — the only reason anyone with a smidgeon of self-respect can justify working at the Booty Chest, the pirate themed sports bar with scantily clad waitresses.

As the youngest member on the team, it had come down to him or JJ. After she stopped faking family and press emergencies, JJ had flat-out refused when she saw the uniform. Or rather, she had refused when she saw what the uniform lacked.

Reid picked at the cheap polyester vest he’d been issued when he arrived this morning absently. At least he didn’t have the black felt pirate hat the waitresses were forced to wear along with their short-shorts (“booty shorts” Morgan had helpfully explained before being hit by both JJ and Prentiss) but the fake parrot, red bandana, and plastic saber had caused his oh-so-helpful co-workers to fall off their chairs. When this was over, he was totally photoshopping Morgan and Prentiss’ yearbook photos and blaming Garcia. And the next road trip, he was bringing Madame Bovary or Ethan Frome on tape — and pouting until Rossi let him play it on the cars’ speaker.

As he dodged drunken fratboys and middle-aged men with grabby hands, he cursed his eidetic memory. The other waitresses gave him tired smiles of sympathy as they ran the same gamut, plastic smiles fixed to their faces all the while. This morning’s basic training had included a binder full of The Booty Chest’s mission statement and standards for behavior, which as the blonde who had quit an hour early boiled down to “act slutty, but sweet.”

He still wasn’t sure if this applied to him and his fellow busboys, but he wasn’t so committed to this lead that he was going to embarrass himself by attempting to follow either direction. It was a tenuous lead in the first place—their arsonist had hit four other similarly morally objectionable establishments (if “The Wham Bam Room” could actually be termed as such). After five days of banging their heads against the wall, this was as good a lead as any — or so Morgan had claimed when he poached the idea of running a short-term undercover operation this morning.

So far, no one sitting at any of the tables fit the profile. No white men between the ages of 20 and 25 sitting alone — at this point in his devolution, it was doubtful the unsub would be able to maintain a façade of normalcy long enough to maintain regular social interactions. Assuming, of course, that visiting the pirate-themed sports bar with scantily clad waitresses was a regular part of his social calendar. Which Reid was beginning to doubt.

He stopped his observance of the room abruptly.

“Yeah,” a voice said from behind him. “That was my reaction too. Though you might want to pull your jaw off the floor—lucha libre fighters aren’t generally the most tolerant of folks.”

Reid blinked, but the three lucha libre fighters, their bright leather masks contrasting nicely with their grey silk suit remained. “Why are there lucha libre fighters here?”

“Beats me,” the other man shrugged. “Tyler Ford,” he said, his hands too full with the remains of wing platter and three empty plates to shake.

Reid bobbed his head in greeting. “Doesn’t it strike you a little bit odd?”

“After the fires all over town in morally-deprived establishments, the robbery at the museum this morning, meeting a semi-abstract expressionist visual artist with a busted Harouk Bugbear or as I call it the pinnacle of Cold War Balkan engineering, and finally debasing myself enough to accept a job here, seeing a bunch of lucha libres gobble down a quadruple order of wings with honey mustard isn’t that odd when you think about.”

Reid raised an eyebrow disbelievingly.

Tyler grinned slightly. “You’ve got a point there. Wings with honey mustard? That’s pretty nuts.”

“Waste of a perfectly good chicken wing,” Reid muttered. “At least they seem to be having a good time at least — and haven’t tried to grab any of the girls.”

“Yet,” Tyler replied darkly. At Reid’s questioning look, he said, “There are good lucha libres and bad lucha llibres and from the limited Spanish I remember from my time growing up on a military base in Panama, these aren’t the good guys.”

“Did you that Panamanians generally believe the word “panama” means an abundance of fish, trees, and butterflies?” Reid asked. But Tyler wasn’t paying any attention. The younger man was completely focused on a waitress Reid hadn’t seen before. She was short, Latina, and paying very close attention to the lucha libre fighters sitting in the corner. “She a friend?”

“Semi-abstract expressionist visual artist with the Bugbear I met this morning,” Tyler explained in a single breath. “She’s actually the one who gave me the idea of applying for a job here. Nice girl.”

“I’m not sure if you should call her nice if meeting her lead to this job.”

Tyler didn’t bother to reply, as the new waitress picked up a tray and started moving towards the lucha libres. He moved to intercept and started trying to convince her she didn’t need to serve that particular table.

In retrospect, Reid supposes he should have seen the fight erupting between the new waitress, the lucha libre fighters, and Tyler coming. It had been that kind of day. But he hadn’t and all he could do was press some ice on Tyler while waiting for the ambulance. The waitress had disappeared soon after the melee began, though she had thrown the first punch. Luckily she and Tyler had only faced off against the largest of the three lucha libre fighters — for some reason the other two had split when the waitress sat down to talk after delivering their beers.

Once Tyler was bundled into the ambulance (and it was great that it wasn’t him for once), Reid started cleaning up the floor. He noticed something shiny as he righted one of the tables and crouched down to investigate. Maybe Garcia had a point about calling him a magpie, but really who could resist looking further when there was something shiny and silver in the area?

It looked like a prop from Star Trek — vaguely cylindrical, green lights, and very very silver. Reid made an executive decision; after the fiasco of the “evil twin, eviler twin” theory, there was no way he’d be asking Hotch to run ballistics on what looked to be some type of laser, or possible an atomic de-moleculizer (which could, of course, be a type of laser). He’d have to investigate further.

But he really wanted to know what kind of secret organization labeled its’ guns.

And who the heck is The Middleman?


End file.
